Quote collection
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"This paper will serve instead of a confidential friend into whose ear I might pour forth the overflowings of my heart. It will not sympathize with my distresses, but then, it will not laugh at them, and, if I keep it close, it cannot tell again; so it is, perhaps, the best friend I could have for the purpose."
"If ever I am a mother I will zealously strive against this crime of over- indulgence. I can hardly give it a milder name when I think of the evils it brings."
"I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other; besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity."
"Such humble talents as God had given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I fell it my duty to speak unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, through it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader's immediate pleasure as well as my own."
"Then, you must fall each into your proper place. You'll do your business, and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's your business to please yourself, and hers to please you."
"What business had I to think so much of one that never thought of me?"
"It is a hard, embittering thing to have one's kind feelings and good intentions cast back in one's teeth."
"Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor."
"I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me."
"How odd it is that we so often weep for each other's distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!"
"You will form a very inadequate estimate of a man's character, if you judge by what a fond sister says of him. The worst of them generally know how to hide their misdeeds from their sisters' eyes, and their mother's, too."
"if I hate the sins, I love the sinner, and would do much for his salvation"
"It is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble your foe."
"If the generous ideas of youth are too often over- clouded by the sordid views of after-life, that scarcely proves them to be false"
"When a lady condescends to apologise, there is no keeping one’s anger."
"I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup."
"A girl's affections should never be won unsought."
"The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die."
"What the world stigmatizes as romantic is often more nearly allied to the truth than is commonly supposed."
"Yet, should thy darkest fears be true, If Heaven be so severe, That such a soul as thine is lost, Oh! how shall I appear?"